Some people have suggested that this integration have been limited by the necessity to appease the carriers. I don't think that iMessage is perfect in any way

Some people have suggested that this integration have been limited by the necessity to appease the carriers. I don't think that iMessage is perfect in any way (if anything the fact that it keeps hogging your messages when you switch from iOS to Android is a big issue) but yeah I also think that it is the way to go. Ideally, nobody should care about the specific protocol used to transport the message, you should just have a contact list and be able to let the app figure it out for you. There are still some contracts where SMS messages are not unlimited though and it sounds like a nightmare to make this kind of automatic fallback without taking the risk to drain your user account. Honestly, the SMS protocol should just die in a corner though. We just need to figure out how (maybe with something similar to WhatsApp ?)